The Price of Inexperience

Today marks my one month of running. 

All this running has taken its toll on my beloved Merrell shoes.  

I never imagined that I could wear out this pair like this.  (Sadness.)

So I told myself, I have to get running shoes.

Rina recommended getting a pair of Asics.  She said her pair has lasted her twenty years.  (Yes, we are that old and I know I should have decided to exercise sooner.) Poppop recommended going to one of the shoe stores that have this gadget that checks your foot pattern.

Off to the mall I went last weekend.  First stop was the shoe store with the foot pattern gadget. I browsed around for a while then marched myself out of the store. All the shoes were way over my budget.   

I went to a sports shop that had a decent selection of rubber shoes.  I looked around  the racks labelled women's running.  If it weren't for the signs, I could have been on the women's walking aisle and not even realise it.  

Honestly, after a while all the shoes looked the same.  Maybe one day my shoe shopping will be more design and comfort based rather than price-based; but at the moment, reality and economics dictate differently.

So there I was trying shoes out in the aisles.  I dislike tight shoes.  As with tight clothes, I feel like I can't breathe when I'm in them.  I like to have room to move.  I need the room to grow.  I am a size 8 1/2 but for some brands I seemed more comfortable in size 9.  (I told you I don't like tight shoes.)

I also tend to avoid sales ladies that like to hover around you when you need space and are never around when you need them.

I didn't find a suitable pair in that second store but I can tell you that I did try on more shoes in that forty-five minutes than I have in the past two years.  

Why is that? 

Let me see.  Yes, now I know why. It's because my current pair came from Z.  And before that, I think my rubber shoes came from an officemate who had given them to me when she passed on Don Bosco uniforms for the boys.  (In between somewhere we took up badminton and I managed to get myself a decent pair of Nikes without much ado because they were pink and they were on sale.  I still have those but they are not suitable for running since they are court shoes, and they are not suitable in rainy weather now that they are pretty worn out.)

I sent Poppop a text message saying that I would be on my way home soon albeit empty-handed.  However I passed a sports shop right before I left the mall and they had Asics shoes on sale within my price range.

Having tried on so many other pairs of shoes in the other store and being pressed for time, I opted to give the shoes on sale a try in size 9.   I asked the guy for shoes a half size larger than the ones I had tried on because the size 9 ones weren't as wide as I wanted them, and I had read somewhere that feet tend to swell when you run.  When the guy said there were none, I settled for the size 9 ones.

I should have known I was in trouble by just looking at the shoes.  They seemed bigger than life.  They certainly were bigger than my current pair.   What really got me worried was when I put them side by side with Poppop's shoes, they were almost the same size!

Yes, in my quest to have comfortably wide shoes, I had forgotten that shoes should not be too long.  Surely my feet have stopped growing.  No matter how many years I waited, I would not have been able to grow into the pair I just bought.

If one's shoes are too big, you end up like Ronald McDonald and are liable to trip over yourself.  True enough, when I tried them out for a run, I worried that I would fall.  

Oh, dear!  How stupid was I to buy a pair of running shoes that didn't fit properly?

I wondered if I would be able to get this pair exchanged.  

I tried to research whether the sport shop had a Return and Exchange policy.  I couldn't find any on their website so I tried other shoe stores.  Sadly all the ones I checked indicated that their policy requires that the shoes be unused and unworn.

Oh, my, if they didn't allow me to swap these shoes, I would have worn the most expensive pair of shoes I have ever purchased for a whole of thirty minutes.

On Thursday, when shops close at a later time than the rest of the week, I went out after dinner to get my shoes returned and exchanged.   All the way there, I was praying that they would take the shoes back without any problem.  I didn't want to pretend that I hadn't worn the shoes because I HAD worn them, but I did want to get a pair of shoes that I COULD use.  

Think positive.  Think positive.

When I arrived at the store, there were several customers.  I had to call the attention of a saleslady on a ladder who was fixing some shirts at the far end of the store.  The transaction was quite straightforward.  I told her that I thought the shoes were too big.  She handed me a pair in 8 1/2 to try on.  (My first instincts were that they were TIGHT and if I didn't know any better, I would get one a half size bigger.)  But I stuck to my guns.  I went for the 8 1/2.  She rung up the exchange.  I walked out of the store with a new pair of shoes.

On the way home, I said prayers of thanksgiving.   Thanks that the store's exchange policy was that the items be in good working order and in a state which could be re-sold.   Thanks that I now had a pair of shoes that with a little luck (and a lot of shoe lace loosening) would enable me to run.   Thanks that the price of inexperience was not equivalent to the cost of a new waffle maker.